New discovery of human bones suggest that Homo sapiens were living side by side with Neanderthals in Northern Germany, 46,000 years ago. Another discovery of a stone-age ropemaking tools is shedding light on the inventive nature of these ancient humans. Several recent discoveries unveiled this week are shedding light on the lives of ancient humans, and their inventiveness and resilience as they initially spread around the world.
This find is particularly interesting since most of what we know of our ancestors comes from stone tools, since softer materials like fibers rarely survive thousands of years of degradation. But for Nicolas Conard, an archeologist from the University of Tübingen in Germany, it makes sense that ancient humans would have needed ropes in their everyday lives.
The cave site at Ranis, left, was particularly challenging because it sits beneath a castle, and collapsed at some point in history, leaving archeologists to break through layers of rock. At right, stone tools found earlier in the cave left researchers wondering whether they were made by humans or Neanderthals.
Stable isotope archaeologist Sarah Pederzani loads small samples into the magazine of an isotope ratio mass spectrometer in order to gain information about past climates.